In late March 2021, Australia’s largest media company Nine was rocked by a major ransomware attack, pushing its head of IT and newly appointed first head of cyber onto a true war footing.
Coming amid a sharp rise in cyberattacks throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, several broadcast and other operations were seriously disrupted, while Nine’s shares fell by as much as 2.4% as news got to market.
Nine’s IT wake up to a ransomware attack
It was 2am on the morning of Sunday March 28 when Damian Cronan, Nine’s chief information and technology officer, took the call.
“[I received] a phone call from one of our senior security engineers, who basically advised me that there was every indication from what we were seeing at the moment that there was a major ransomware attack on foot within the night in the business,” he tells CSO Australia.